My Lucky Day, on Dispatch from the Razor's Edge

"I can't believe that we would lie in our graves
Dreaming of things that we might have been."
-Dave Mathews

So today was bookmarked as the Day of Irrevocable Actions^TM. (Not a bad numerical date for it at all – as my (quarter-)Irish mum might point out.) I planned (tentatively) to pull a few levers – termination of rental agreements, non-refundable flights, storage rental reservations, etc. – that would really lock me into this here course of drastic action.

Then, on my workout – between the gym, and the run in the foothills – my MP3 player, on shuffle play, with a grouping of 460 songs, played Dave Mathews' "Lie In Our Graves" three times, in like an hour. "Okay, there's an unsubtle hint," thought I. (Is my Treo 10 animate?) Still, I had no intention of listening to that particular aural admonition once more. As I sprinted gamely down the mountain, I jammed the fast-forward button, and the next song it picked was . . . "The Enemy Within," by Rush.

I'm not giving in to security under pressure
I'm not missing out on the promise of adventure
I'm not giving up on implausible dreams
Experience to extremes
Experience to extremes…

"Holy cow," spake I, tearing up in mid-jog. "Well, that really seals the deal, doesn't it?" Picking up my pace, I shouted at the mountains, "God love you, Neil!"

To you, is it movement or is it action?
Is it contact or just reaction?
And you…revolution or just resistance?
Is it living, or just existence?
Yeah, you! It takes a little more persistence
To get up and go the distance

At home, doing more triaging of crap, I was going through the closet with the paintball stuff and I found . . . my stainless steel knife – with the molded rubber grip and black nylon sheath! Yeah! This is the same knife that got me safely through Central America – and that I thought was long-lost. Now it's back – and going with me to another potentially very dicey place. (And providing another really good omen, muhahahaha . . .)

my exodus mp3 players running rush

Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very long walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

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Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.


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